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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26552392">you weren't mine to lose</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account'>orphan_account</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>within these walls [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Dynasty (TV 2017)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Almost Dating, Angst, F/F, One-Sided Attraction, Pining, Unrequited Love, fallon carrington ruins everything part infinity, i wrote this instead of sleeping and you can tell, lilah kahn deserves a redemption arc so i gave her one, they really had potential, yes this was just an excuse to rewrite hangover cure</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 08:28:10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,316</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26552392</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Lilah couldn't compete with Fallon Carrington. No one could compete with Fallon Carrington. Not for Kirby, anyway.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Kirby Anders/Fallon Carrington, Kirby Anders/Original Female Character(s)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>within these walls [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1667247</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>you weren't mine to lose</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Hello everyone! It's approximately 2am here right now and I present you with the midnight sun of hangover cure which I finished 5ish minutes ago. This isn't beta read because I'm impatient and wanted to post this immediately and I am also very much delirious because I'm tired. Thanks 4 reading. Please enjoy the possible finale to the withing these walls trilogy (but probably not I'm obsessed with this fic)<br/>Happy reading!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Lilah couldn’t compete with Fallon Carrington. No one could compete with Fallon Carrington. Not for Kirby, anyway. Fallon was like a magnet to Kirby, so strong that not even four years apart weakened the pull. They were part of one another. Woven into each other’s lives and they’d hate to undo the stitching. It would be a sin to rip it apart, cruel in a way words describe.</p><p>When Lilah woke up at her usual six fifteen to find the billionaire heiress sleeping on her living room couch, she’d known then and there that her budding relationship with the redhead was about to come to a painful, grinding halt. Between the cheap blanket that was draped around Fallon and her presence in the apartment at all, Lilah knew it was game over. No matter how hard she would try, she could never live up to the brunette. Never.</p><p>She slipped back into her bedroom and ignored the sleeping woman in the living room, and the pain in her chest that she brought about. She got ready quickly, haphazardly doing her makeup and straightening her hair in order to get out of the small apartment before either Kirby or Fallon woke up. She couldn’t bear having to speak to either of them. She thought she might burst into flames.</p><p>The night before, Kirby had sent Lilah three texts, each getting more incoherent as time passed:</p><p>
  <strong>
    <em>kirb: </em>
  </strong>
  <em>i’ll be home around midnight! don’t have to wait up on me</em>
</p><p>
  <strong>
    <em>kirb: </em>
  </strong>
  <em>nvm oilvre wnts to stay ltr c you tomrrw</em>
</p><p>
  <strong>
    <em>kirb: </em>
  </strong>
  <em>dont be sacred of the grill on the cudfh it jttd fpllan catrrjgofn</em>
</p><p>Lilah had gotten the gist when she read the messages the morning after, though she had to read them several times over before the last one made perfect sense. And it didn’t fully hit her until she was standing in the room with the one woman whom she was mildly afraid of.</p><p>Lilah had lived in Atlanta for seven years – since she was 18. The Carrington family, and therefore Fallon, had been on her radar since her third day there. Always on the news for something or other. Hundred-year anniversaries. Carcinogenic fracking fields. General bad behaviour. Once, a news anchor had described them as Atlanta’s very own Kardashians. Lilah was inclined to agree.</p><p>Fallon, for some reason, had become a sort of obsession with Georgia’s youth, Lilah found. She dressed like a Barbie doll and was undeniably beautiful. Hypnotizingly so. She dated high profile men with fat wallets and bottomless bank accounts. She had three public indecency charges and five DUIs. And she got nothing but a slap on the wrist – if that. There was a universal fascination with her that even Lilah had found herself wrapped up in at times. Fallon Carrington was like a train wreck. And not always metaphorically.</p><p>Lilah spent the entirety of her workday with the possible outcomes of what she’d seen a glimpse of this morning rattling around in her head. She could very well come home to Fallon and Kirby back together like nothing had ever happened. Or everything would be as it was. A favour between old friends. She doubted the latter, but she considered herself an optimist. If she thought about it enough, then it would happen – she was manifesting it.</p><p>She stopped at the grocery store on the way home from work to delay her homegoing as much as possible. If she stalled it enough, the situation would disappear. Permanently. That’s exactly how it would work. She got milk and eggs and bread, things Kirby never thought to buy on her trips for cigarettes and Hot Cheetos.</p><p>Lilah had to psych herself up to enter her apartment building. She shouldn’t have to – she shouldn’t be afraid of going home. But the thought of finding <em>them</em> together made her feel slightly ill. The front door was open when she got to it. Kirby, at least, was home. She waited a moment before entering. Just Kirby was home. Watching a muted Adam Sandler movie and cuddling her cat.</p><p>“Hey,” she said in greeting. She sighed when she saw the look on her roommate’s face. She was all kinds of distraught – conflicted. Why had she done this to herself?</p><p>“Hi, babes,” Kirby said without taking her attention away from the TV. The trepidation in Lilah’s chest deflated slightly. <em>Babes.</em></p><p>She walked to the kitchen and unpacked and put away the groceries. She took her time, reorganising the refrigerator and cleaning the bread bin. All very unnecessary. But she couldn’t look at Kirby again.</p><p>“I’m going out for a smoke.” The redhead paused the TV, stood from the couch and slipped out the sliding door of the balcony. Lilah waited a few moments before following her. She threw her jacket on the back of the couch despite it raining outside.</p><p>She sat down next to Kirby in the doorframe, the glass door fully open. Rain pattered on the pavement. Cars rushed past, flashes of fog lights glaring through the mist. Kirby lit a cigarette and wrapped around herself. She didn’t acknowledge Lilah. She stared forward; her gaze distant.</p><p>Kirby tapped the growing overhang of ash from her cigarette but had yet to take a drag. Lilah stared at it, waiting for her to bring it to her lips. But she kept her wrist firmly on her knee. Lilah took in a breath and placed her head on Kirby’s shoulder. Neither said a word. Kirby didn’t protest, her acceptance of the gesture a gentle reassurance. For now, they were fine watching it storm outside.</p><p>Lilah’s mother would have said that Kirby was too pretty for her own good; that looks like that would get her in trouble. She wouldn’t have been wrong. Lilah knew little about <em>their</em> relationship, but from what Kirby had told her (and some light stalking of both their Instagram profiles), it had gotten them both in trouble. With one another, anyway.</p><p>Lilah took the now burned-out cigarette from between Kirby’s fingers and dropped it, watching it land in a small puddle a metre in front of them. “You could have burned yourself,” she said, tutting softly.</p><p>Kirby cleared her throat and looked away. Lilah wished she knew what the other woman was thinking. If her thoughts were any better than her own inseparable knots that twisted themselves tighter when she tried to decipher them. She hoped so.</p><p>Kirby blew out an exhale and shrugged. “It’s just a lot,” she said, keeping her eyes on the sparse traffic. She rubbed a hand on her jeans to warm herself up. It was getting too cold to stay out there for much longer. “It was really weird seeing her. I haven’t seen her in so long, you know?” Not since <em>they’d</em> broken up. The way it should have been. Exes weren’t supposed to have drunken sleepovers.</p><p>Lilah nodded, her gaze still searing into Kirby’s cheek. After a moment, she returned her head to Kirby’s shoulder. That was the end of the conversation. The silence terrified Lilah.</p><p>*</p><p>The rain quickly turned to storm. Every time it stormed, badly at least, the electricity would shudder off and the heating would wane. The bottom floor of the apartment building would flood. There was a reason their rent was so cheap.</p><p>Once the weather warning had graced her notification centre, she made plans to stay at a friends house. There was no way she’d be able to survive one night in the icebox that was her apartment. Kirby claimed she’d be fine.</p><p>“I’ve lived through worse,” she said, pulling a hoodie over her head and digging through the linen closet for the ancient Sherpa quilts that had been there when we moved in. It took her three hours to text Lilah that she and Henry would be staying with her father up in Buckhead. In the twenty-eight-million-dollar house with amenities that Lilah couldn’t even dream to ever afford. And the person she never could dream to be – Fallon Carrington.</p><p>Lilah’s heart dropped. Kirby wasn’t almost hers anymore. Not even close.</p><p>*</p><p>Kirby called Lilah at exactly eleven o’clock the same night they had to informally evacuate their apartment.</p><p>“Hi,” she said breathlessly. Henry mewled in the background. Lilah smiled into the phone. “I didn’t wake you, did I?”</p><p>“No, no. Is everything okay?”</p><p>“Yeah. Everything’s fine. Being here is… It’s kind of overwhelming. Can we stay on call until we fall asleep? I need something familiar.”</p><p>That house must have been the definition of familiar for Kirby. It was her childhood home. But, Lilah guess it was the bad kind of familiar. She was the good kind of familiar.</p><p>“Of course.”</p><p>Kirby fell asleep within half an hour. Lilah fifteen minutes after. <em>They’d be fine.</em> For once, Fallon Carrington hadn’t ruined everything she touched.</p><p>*</p><p>After that night, Lilah and Kirby communicated exclusively through text. Updates about the heating in their apartment. Small catchups at intervals in their day. Nothing of consequence. Innocent as sin. It almost took two weeks for them to see one another in person. Lilah told herself it was because it was the holidays – Kirby was spending time with her family. It could have been true if she hadn’t clearly expressed her borderline hatred of the Carringtons – bar Fallon. Kirby could never hate Fallon. It wasn’t in her nature.</p><p>Lilah arrived at the Starbucks fifteen minutes early. She picked at her cuticles and folded a napkin into tiny triangles and squares to pass the time. Kirby arrived fifteen minutes late, looking utterly exhausted. Her movements we rigid and choppy. Like she hadn’t slept well on an uncomfortable bed.</p><p>“Hi,” she said, catching her breath. She smelled of cigarettes and something expensive. Ten days in the manor and she already seemed fundamentally different. Or maybe how she <em>should</em> be. She was home there. It never occurred to Lilah how homesick Kirby had seemed before. It seemed so blatant in hindsight. She sat down and shrugged off her jacket and stared down the sticky wood of the table.</p><p>“Hey!” Lilah tried to keep her smile bright, but she felt like her lungs were collapsing in on themselves. She swallowed, fishing for something to say. There wasn’t anything. Kirby didn’t want to be there. It felt like they were on the verge of a breakup and they weren’t even together – officially. All they had now was wasted potential.</p><p>They went to the counter to order their drinks after several long, suffocating minutes. They had to move before one of them stopped breathing.</p><p>At least she had good news about the apartment. Their lights would be back on by week’s end and they were getting a month of their rent free because of the hassle. It melted the ice for a whole minute. Lilah’s dad had straightened everything out. Now, they could go back to normal.</p><p>Kirby laughed a little bit when Lilah had finished speaking.</p><p>“What’s so funny?” she asked, tracing a line of condensation down her iced coffee with a finger badly in need of a manicure.</p><p>“Nothing… You sounded like Fallon when you said that.”</p><p>Lilah choked on nothing. She wasn’t sure if she should have took that as a compliment or an insult. She didn’t want to know.</p><p>“What’s it been like living with her?”</p><p>“It’s been okay. She’s been surprisingly nice to me,” Kirby said, staring at her still full-to-the-brim cup. “She tried to kiss me, though. That was a little weird.”</p><p>Lilah’s whole body stiffened, her muscles in her neck, back and shoulder constricting. “And?”</p><p>“We didn’t kiss. It’s… we’re past that. She’s my <em>ex</em>-girlfriend for a reason.”</p><p>“You’re not getting back together?”</p><p>“No. Absolutely not.” Kirby was a bad liar.</p><p>Lilah nodded, mildly satisfied with that answer. She knew she was going to be replaced by Fallon, it felt inevitable. But at least it wasn’t right then.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>Lilah worried that perhaps Kirby would lay there until she decomposed into her thin, discount store mattress. That Lilah would come check on her and find nothing but her skeleton and the rings on her fingers. The thought was almost appealing, in the most sickeningly morbid way. That way, Fallon couldn’t have her, couldn’t steal her.</p><p>“She’s married,” Kirby said when she came home, her face blotchy and her hair wet.</p><p>“I need to be alone for a while,” she said when she curled under comforter and buried her head in her flat pillows.</p><p>“You’re not my girlfriend, Lilah,” she said, biting the nail of her thumb. “You have no right to be jealous.”</p><p>And she was right.</p><p>If she hadn’t lost before, everything ended the moment the doorbell rang. It was for Kirby. It was Fallon. Her cherry-red Porsche had pulled into the parking lot ten minutes before. She’d been giving herself a pep talk into the rear-view mirror for an almost embarrassing amount of time. Nothing Lilah did, or ever would do, mattered anymore. Her competition was there, and she was in no position to win.</p><p>Despite the crying and the yelling and asphyxiating animosity, Lilah could feel the pieces of <em>their</em> relationship gluing themselves back together. <em>They</em> were working things out, patching up holes they’d ignored for years.</p><p>Fallon Carrington was more intimidating in person. By a long shot. She was taller than Lilah imagined. Had more confidence than she even thought possible. She couldn’t compete with a lifetime of history and everything <em>they’d</em> been through together. No matter how hard she tried. This was Lilah’s cue to leave.</p><p>*</p><p>Lilah moved out from the apartment she shared with Kirby. She watched from afar as <em>they</em> got engaged a year-and-a-half later. Married two years after that. And welcomed three beautiful children – twin boys and a girl – into the world five years after that. Their four cats and their vacation home down in Savannah. Everything Lilah thought <em>she </em>would have with Kirby. But, of course, Fallon got it instead.</p>
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